In the field of painting of surfaces with paint spray guns, it is desirable to consume the least amount of paint, cleaning agent, and painting sample objects during the training of personnel to use the paint spray gun. Thus, the training of painters is done conventionally by the actual painting of various objects, so that the painting is repeated several times for training purposes. The drawback here is that much paint and enamel and cleaning agents are consumed and the painted objects become unusable after several applications of paint, so that they must be disposed of.
Moreover, when preparing paint samples and design proposals for painting tasks, it is desirable to be able to test various paint treatments in a quick, easy, and realistic way. For this purpose, the prior art offers two possibilities, namely, the preparation of actual sample paint treatments or the simulation of a paint treatment by means of a computer-aided drawing and painting software.
The conventional means of preparing sample paint treatments consists of applying the desired paint treatments with an actual paint spray gun onto the surfaces of actual objects, which naturally achieves the original representation of the different coat of paints. The drawback here is that a sample piece must be prepared for each coat of paint, so as to compare the different coats of paint to each other. Especially when the objects to be painted are large and costly, this method is costly and cumbersome. The painting process itself is costly and time-consuming, since the surfaces of the objects first must be prepared for the painting, and the paint or enamel must dry after each coat of paint. It is difficult, if not impossible, to correct mistakes during the painting. Furthermore, paint, enamel, and environmentally harmful cleaning agents are consumed during these sample paint treatments. After selecting the desired paint treatment, the painted objects are destroyed or, if destined for recycling, the paint must be removed from them in a costly manner, thereby entailing the use of cleaning agents that are harmful to human health and the environment.
In an alternative possibility, the desired spray painting can be simulated with computer-assisted painting and drawing software on a conventional data processing system. For this purpose, the simulation of the painting or enameling task is done with conventional computer input devices, such as a computer mouse or computer drawing pen, and the display appears on the monitor of the data processing system. The colors and shapes of the painting or enameling task are set by software in the drawing and painting program, so that the visual display of the painting will appear as close as possible to an actual painting task using a manually operated paint spray gun. The drawback of this computer-assisted simulation of the manual paint application is that the conventional computer input devices-can only inadequately simulate the handling and operation of an actual paint spray gun, so that the simulation of the painting task as displayed on the monitor screen can only inadequately simulate the effects achieved during an actual painting task with an actual paint spray gun. Some effects cannot even be simulated at all in this way, such as bringing the paint spray jet closer to or further away from the surface to be painted.